Daniel M Karlsson
Towards A Music for a Large Ensemble
SWEDEN FÖNSTRET 14 LP (2024)
First solo vinyl release from this Stockholm composer, although there seem to have been some file-based releases since 2017, one cassette A Loss Of Self and a double CD Mapping The Valleys of the Uncanny, both on the Xkatedral label (which he runs with Kali Malone and others).
Karlsson teaches music courses at EMS and has some connections with Fylkingen too. He’s a strong advocate for open-source music software, especially SuperCollider, and apparently if you meet him he can’t wait to show you how easy it is to download such apps and start making your own compositions. From what I can make out, Towards A Music for a Large Ensemble made use of such software; and if you buy a download of the release, he’ll gladly share the source code for his composition so that you could do this yourself at home, if so disposed. I think we’re talking about a “virtual orchestra” here; Daniel M Karlsson played and recorded 64 separate musical instruments (and other objects) himself, and, as if to point out the process-heavy nature of the piece, the cover art shows the three-letter save names that he used in his computer as he assembled his materials. The compositional input has been to set these 64 hares running over the hill, using an “algorithmic” method to organise the separate sound files and perhaps let them unspool and collide in varying degrees of randomness.
Although there aren’t 64 separate human beings involved, Karlsson evidently wishes there could be; he loves the idea of a non-hierarchical situation, where 64 players could be in the room all doing their own thing without the need of a conductor, scores, arrangements, or any of that cissy stuff from the 19th century. “A communal sensing and creating all at once … by individual agents with autonomy,” is what he dreams of in his ideal future world of egalitarian creativity. He’d also like to present the listener with ambiguities and dilemmas thereby, inviting us to guess how “real” or authentic these sounds are, how they’re being made, and whether we can form different interpretations of the same source material. To realise that latter aspect, side 2 of the LP contains the same equation as Side 1, just replayed at a different location one month later. I wish there were more musical content, ideas, structure, or even some interesting textures that would make this exercise more worthwhile; where he perceives an endless slew of possibilities, I simply hear a range of very similar overlapping grey tones all swirling together in a gigantic whirlpool, slowly descending into the same vortex of nothingness. From 15 October 2024.